UCLA in the News August 18, 2014

(Op-ed by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block) In this season of vacation travel, many of us are happily resigned to jet lag as the price of international adventure. The malaise associated with crossing time zones has been recognized for decades, of course. What's new is our understanding of the wider phenomenon that scientists call “circadian disruption,” a disorder of our internal timing system. It can have profound health consequences, and its causes extend well beyond the occasional overseas jaunt.

“We were looking at the MIR body mass index — that’s basically an indicator of weight,” said UCLA’s Dr. Janet Tomiyama. “Stress can in fact lead to weight gain over time. And what we wanted to do was see whether stress and weight gain were related in younger people. We know it happens in adults; does it actually happen earlier in life, and how early does it happen?”

A disposable plastic listening device that attaches to the abdomen may help doctors definitively determine which post-operative patients should be fed and which should not, an invention that may improve outcomes, decrease healthcare costs and shorten hospital stays, according to a UCLA study.

A UCLA study shows that California diabetics who live in low-income neighborhoods are up to 10 times more likely to lose a toe, foot or leg than patients from affluent areas like Beverly Hills. Earlier diagnosis and proper treatment could prevent millions of amputations, the researchers say. (Also: Voice of OC, Diabetes in Control)

“It has to begin with a different understanding of what breeds compliance with the law,” said UCLA’s Phillip Atiba Goff. “Compliance with the law begins with powers of example, not examples of power.” (Also: KPCC-FM’s “Take Two,” WEAA-FM (Baltimore), euronews)

“If we videotape interrogations, then the prosecutors can see what the suspect acknowledged, so can the jury, so can the defense attorney,” said UCLA’s Jennifer Mnookin. “The suspect has to live with his or her words. It provides much better information to everybody.”

UCLA’s recent diversity report noted that dramas and comedies with diverse casts excel in the ratings, but also that most shows it examined lacked diversity both on- and off-screen — which, it concluded, “does not bode well for the Hollywood industry as the nation’s population continues to diversify at a dizzying rate.”

Sometimes our theories about the world take on a life of their own. We take them so seriously that we ignore the properties of our environment that generated those theories in the first place. A cognitive psychologist and visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, [Viki] McCabe believes this tendency often gets out of hand, contributing to many of modern society’s tragedies and ills.

“The fact that we see so many rare variants is, in part, due to the fact that human populations have been growing very rapidly,” says John Novembre of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study.